OT: Re: MSN and XFree86

[Alan Jackson]

On Fri, 05 Mar 2004 21:36:26 -0600
Michael Hipp <michael at cullenandcompany.com> wrote:

> Alan Jackson wrote:
> 
> > Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
> > - Robert Heinlein (Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I think)
> 
> "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."
>    --  Napoleon Bonaparte
> 
> http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2308
> 
> Wonder if Heinlein accidentally quoted Bonaparte.
> 

Could be. I googled for a while and found that opinion is divided
between Napoleon and Heinlein. No one I found could point to a
Napoleon cite, however. I did find :

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
      - Logic of Empire

http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Quotes/Popular/SciFi/Heinlein.html

For Heinlein fans, I also found an amazing website,

http://home.netcom.com/~mecowan/hc/index.htm

A Heinlein Concordance

A paragraph on *every* character and place from all his novels and short 
stories. And he wrote a lot!

Here is more on this elusive quote...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_law
A corollary of Finagle's law, Hanlon's Razor reads "Never attribute to malice
that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." The derivation of the
common title "Hanlon's Razor" is unknown; a similar epigram has been attributed
to William James. One possible derivation is from the similarity to Occam's
Razor. The website Status-Q attributes it to one Robert J. Hanlon who seemingly
contributed it to a book about Murphy's law.

A similar quote appears in Robert Heinlein's 1941 short story Logic of Empire:
"You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity."
It is possible that the term 'Hanlon's Razor' is a bastardisation of
'Heinlein's Razor'.

This maxim is also widely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.


Now Webster's online has :
Napoleon Bonaparte
	Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

but they don't tell the source, although it may be Bartlett's.
However, the site http://www.bartleby.com/quotations/
which references Bartlett's and 3 other large quote collections, doesn't
have the quote at all! 

There are also many websites attributing the quote to author Nick Daimos,
however, *I* never heard of him, and I cannot find a single reference to him
detached from his supposed quote. I suspect he doesn't exist. Library of
Congress has nothing by this "author". 

Other suggestions were Clausewitz as the source.

No resolution on where it came from - I'll have to find a copy of Logic
of Empire and look it up.

I remember reading in "Straight Dope" that quotations are notoriously
difficult to track down, and are very frequently mangled and mis-attributed,
even by authorities like Bartlett's. I believe it!!

-- 
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| Alan K. Jackson            | To see a World in a Grain of Sand      |
| alan at ajackson.org          | And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,         |
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